God's foreknowledge of Christ's crucifixion

Kaydee said:for those who believe we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God (defined as looking down the corridor of time and seeing that we are going to believe in Christ and accept Him as our Savior)

I don't know what the other brethren believe but I assure you that is not mine. It's not that we accepted Christ it's that we were given to the Son by the Father to save.

Romans 9:11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth

Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh reconciling the world of his elect children to himself. Yes he was chosen in eternity and that can be seen in the scripture from the sixth chapter of Isaiah Who shall we sent who will go for us? Here am I send me? Then if you look in the book of Revelation there was much weeping because of the fallen race of mankind and John thought they were doomed. In Revelation 5:6 We see a lamb that had been slained as the answer to those given in Christ from the fallen race of mankind. Weep no more John the plan and the remedy are in Gods hands and he will save his people. When the fullness of time was come God sent forth his Son. When the time came for God to redeem his people Jesus was born for that purpose. God protected him until the hour came the reason for him coming into the world. Then he withdrew his protection from him that his purpose and plan before the foundation world would be carried out. He withdrew his loving protection when our sins were layed on his beloved Son and only then could men by wicked hands kill the Son of glory. His Father delivered him but wicked men killed him!... Brother Glen

 

Sister, It is my humble opinion that the answer to your problem rests in an acceptance of this parodox of Scripture, where they(the Scriptures) teach both The Sovereignty of God and the free will of man. Deny it as we like both are there, and since the finite human mind can not seem to reconcile the two doctrines, they say you have to be one or the other. But, both as they exist systematic doctrines are false. The truth lies in the Bibles teaching concerning both.
God Bless your search
for the truth

 

Excellent point. When Charles Spurgeon was asked about reconciling these two items he replied that he did not try to reconcile friends.

An overemphasis on man's responsiblity results in Arminianism. An overemphasis on God's sovereignty results in Hyper-Calvinism. The middle and Biblical ground is Calvinism where both ideas are given their equal force in teaching.

One redeemed by Christ's blood,

Ken

 

Ot the extremes are Pelagianism and Calvinism. Arminianism is the middle and Biblical ground.

What would you say is the difference between Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism?

 

The below is from www.skylinc.net/~tbc/art_diff6.htm

One redeemed by Christ's blood,

Ken

V - HYPER-CALVINISM

Therefore we need to ask, what is a "Hyper-Calvinist"?

The word "Hyper" indicates a "going beyond", "further than the proper bounds"; it indicates an extreme, beyond the norm; and indeed there is such a thing as Hyper-Calvinism, but this can hardly be an acceptance and preaching of the "5 points", for looking historically and accurately at Calvinism the "5 points" are the norm.

In a very real sense Arminianism and Hyper-Calvinism share a basic factor in common. They both try to apply human logic to the divine revelation. The Arminian reasons this way - "because men are commanded to repent and believe the gospel, they must therefore have the ability within themselves to do so" (they fail to apply the same logic to God's command to men to keep His law). From this bad logic they derive their doctrine of free will. The Hyper-Calvinist reasons this way - "because men do not have the ability within themselves to repent and believe the gospel, therefore there is no point in commanding them to do so". Both these groups are correct until they get to their "therefore", and then human logic and deduction takes over; but unfortunately they go beyond what is revealed in the Scriptures.

The Calvinistic, Biblical position takes the truth from both these statements and holds them both without trying to make them "logical". Men are commanded to repent and believe the gospel, and they are responsible to God to do so; men are unable in and of themselves to repent and believe because of their sinful nature. This is the dilemma into which the grace of God enters, according to His purpose of election, and by the mighty power of the Spirit, those for whom Christ died are made alive, and brought by the gospel to repentance and faith in the Saviour. This is the miracle of God's salvation!

The Hyper-Calvinist grasps the truth of man's inability, and the truth that God will certainly save His elect, but he wrongly deducts from that there is no necessity therefore to preach the gospel to every creature, and to engage in efforts to reach the lost.

His "logic" in going beyond the Scriptures brings him into an unbiblical position where he ceases to see the necessity of using God-ordained "means" to produce the God-ordained goals. This sad fact often produces a lack of evangelistic zeal and missionary activity among Hyper-Calvinists, and a lack of compassion for the lost.

Coupled with this fact we may say that the Hyper-Calvinist not only does not see the necessity for preaching the gospel to every creature, but considers it wrong to urge repentance and faith upon sinners indiscriminately. It is sometimes expressed this way, that the Hyper-Calvinist does not believe in "duty faith" and "duty repentance"; he does not believe that all men should be invited to come to Christ. In contrast to this, the historic Calvinist does most certainly believe that it is the duty and responsibility of all men to repent and believe even though they have, through sin, lost the ability to do so; and the Calvinist does not hesitate to bid all men everywhere to repent, and to invite every man to trust the Saviour.

True Calvinism therefore is not opposed to evangelism and missionary activity for it recognizes that the elect must be saved through the gospel, and like Paul the Calvinist puts the question "how shall they hear without a preacher"? Again, if it is the duty of all men to repent and believe, then all men must be told of this responsibility. The fact that true Calvinism is not opposed to evangelism and missionary work is attested to by the great names of history who have gone to the ends of the earth to proclaim the gospel and who were Calvinistic in their theology. The names of John Eliot, David Brainerd, John Paton, William Carey and George Whitefield suffice to make the point.

Hyper-Calvinism is also characterised by the view that God's decree of election is viewed without reference to the Fall of man, that is, the Hyper-Calvinist believes that God created some men with the express purpose of damning them simply as creatures, not as sinful, fallen creatures.

Historic Calvinism, on the other hand, has always presented God's decree of election as a most gracious decree against the background of the Fall of man. Out of a race already on the way to hell because of its own sin. God graciously wills to choose a great multitude out of sheer mercy and grace. God does not damn men for nothing says Calvinism. He damns them because of their sin.

Another characteristic that has been seen in some (though not all) Hyper-Calvinists is "Antinomianism". The word means "against or opposed to the law". It represents the idea that the moral law is not binding on the Christian, and some have indeed claimed to be God's elect, and on the basis of his claim have then proceeded to live as they pleased, disregarding the Word of God and bringing great reproach on the cause of Truth.

Historic Calvinism, following the Bible as its guide, has also insisted that the fact of election is always revealed in holiness of life, and has strongly condemned the Antinomianism of some Hyper-Calvinists.

Other factors might be added, but enough has been said to show that Hyper-Calvinism is as distinct from Historic Calvinism as is Arminianism. They are both extreme positions, though of course opposite extremes; they are both departures from the Biblical position, and both suffer from the insistence of applying human logic where human logic has no right to be!

 

And that's the problem with Calvinism. The problem of evil. If God is indeed the primary cause of all things, as Calvinism holds to, then even the secondary factors, such as man, relate back to the primary. In other words, man sins because of the effectual fiat of God. Calvinism can only explain the existence of evil by contradicting their own Calvinian logic. Either God is responsible for all in the world or he's not.

The question of evil was the thing that probably first caused me to push away from Calvinism - to say that God "ordained" evil in some divine decree is an outrage and undesirable.

 

I do not believe that God ordained evil. God uses evil for His purposes. We all commit evil acts because that is what we want to do because of our fallen nature. We are not puppets on a string. I believe in both Divine sovereignty and man's responsibility and I am willing to live with the tension between the two. It appears, my friend, that you don't won't to live with the tension and feel you must resolve it one way or the other. Simply accept both as being true, just like you accept the other difficult to understand truths like the Trinity, the virgin birth, etc.

One redeemed by Christ's blood,

Ken

 

I do not believe that God ordained evil. God uses evil for His purposes. We all commit evil acts because that is what we want to do because of our fallen nature. We are not puppets on a string. I believe in both Divine sovereignty and man's responsibility and I am willing to live with the tension between the two. It appears, my friend, that you don't won't to live with the tension and feel you must resolve it one way or the other. Simply accept both as being true, just like you accept the other difficult to understand truths like the Trinity, the virgin birth, etc.

One redeemed by Christ's blood,

Ken</font>[/QUOTE]Now we've touched on the standard Calvinist answer: God ordained everything, but we don't like the evil issue, so we'll just say it's unexplainable.

Where did the fallen nature come from? Why did God ordain Adam to sin? Why did God choose to bring evil in the world? Why did God CHOOSE to create people merely to send them to eternal damnation? Why would a righteous and just God condemn people who didn't have a chance in the first place?

...all questions that Calvinism is unable to answer, except for the pat "well, it's just not understandable."

 

Good point. Let's get back to the original topic.